Just as we were thinking that the summer had been relatively quiet, along comes what appears to be a serious fabrication scandal. It started with a story by Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post about how Alexis Debat, a former French defense official and consultant to ABC News, faked an interview with Barack Obama. Now it has turned into a widening scandal.
Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News has a comprehensive look at Debat's other transgressions. ABC also published an account about the fake Obama interview. Then it followed up with a rather shocking report:
Former President Bill Clinton, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan have added their names to the list of people who say they were the subjects of fake interviews published in a French foreign affairs journal under the name of Alexis Debat, a former ABC News consultant.
"This guy is just sick," said Patrick Wajsman, the editor of the magazine, Politique Internationale, a prestigious publication that has been in business for 29 years. Wajsman said he was removing all articles with Debat's byline from the magazine's Web site.
That same piece notes what ABC News is doing to examine his work for the network:
ABC News says it is reviewing all stories in which Debat has played a role.
"We investigated and could not establish his academic credentials," said ABC News senior vice president Jeffrey Schneider. Schneider said ABC News began a review of all of his work as a consultant but that so far, "our initial review has found that the information he provided ABC News checked out and was backed up by other sources."
Debat, who resigned yesterday as a senior fellow on counterterrorism issues at the Nixon Center, a Washington think tank, told ABCNews.com his only mistake was to allow his name to be put on interviews done by others.
Debat admitted he did not conduct interviews with Clinton, Pelosi, Bloomberg, Gates, Greenspan or Annan.
Let's hope ABC News continues to investigate Debat and delivers a full report. FishBowlNY also has an interesting email exchange with Debat.
